


Old Vocations

by ishtarelisheba



Series: Dark Castle Shenanigans [1]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Dark Castle, F/M, Rumbelle Showdown
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-22
Updated: 2015-04-22
Packaged: 2018-03-25 05:05:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3797818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ishtarelisheba/pseuds/ishtarelisheba
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rumbelle Showdown 2015 - Round Two - (prompts: westbound, needles, holding back)</p><p>The origins of that blue dress. You know the one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Old Vocations

It hadn't escaped his notice that her gown was growing more ragged by the day. Washing stone floors, bringing in wood for the stove, tromping through the forest - it had taken its toll. He'd noticed beads missing from her neckline, and the hem had been hopelessly stained despite her attempts at scrubbing it clean. The fabric had lost its luster. His little maid needed a new dress.

Rumpelstiltskin had climbed up to reach the topmost shelf of the bookcase in his tower laboratory when she approached with some unnatural silence.

"What are you doing?" she asked, a note of annoyance in her voice.

He nearly toppled himself from his stool. "None of your business," he squawked, grabbing the box he'd been looking for and holding it to him as he hopped neatly down. "What have I told you about interrupting me?"

"It's dinnertime," Belle explained as if to a child. "I called you to eat twenty minutes ago. It's all gone cold."

He shrugged, flipping a dismissive hand at her. "I'll fix it when I get there."

"You're not coming down now?"

"Impertinent," he pronounced her, but it was without the venom he'd intended. "I'll be down soon. Off with you."

His maid sighed longsufferingly at him and turned away. He heard the pat of her slippers on the stairs as she went, and he supposed she would need new shoes at some point, as well.

He opened the very old, very beaten up little wooden box. The wood felt velvety with age. He hadn't had occasion to open it in decades, other than infrequent moments when he couldn't push away the need to hold a tactile memory of a better time. Beneath a small wooden tray that held spools of thread long become too fragile for use, he found a woolen pincushion crowded with tiny iron sewing pins. Beneath that, a tightly-woven swatch of cloth held onto a half dozen needles he'd had since his Aunties took it upon themselves to teach him how to properly sew. They didn't shine as well as he remembered them to. A trip through the emery would fix that. The entire box accompanied him downstairs. He had work to do even before he could put his hands to fabric.

First thing the next morning, he popped down to the village below his castle. It was an easy thing, obtaining the linen. Half a gold coin would have bought ten times the amount he required, but he hadn't need of it. The young weaver woman was overjoyed, though her wariness of him smothered it until he was on his way out.

His breakfast was on the table when he got back, and his maid looked out the window, having pried a nail loose so that she could see. Winter was nearly upon them, and he wondered for a moment if she looked at the turning foliage in the garden. Then he realized how her gaze was westbound, toward her home, and he scowled at himself for the twinge of sympathy that surfaced.

"Well!" he said, and she startled away from the window. "At least my _breakfast_ isn't cold." He plopped himself into his chair and the paper-wrapped package onto the table.

"I did wonder if it would be, as long as it took you," Belle said, cheerfulness hiding the bit of sass she dared, and her melancholy, as well. She sat herself on the table across the corner from him.

"Do you no longer eat in the kitchen?" he asked, raising an eyebrow at her.

"The kitchen is too hot after cooking. If you can handle my company," she challenged, taking the second plate she'd set out, and began to fill it.

He groused. "I suppose I can stomach it."

After breakfast, he took the parcel up to his tower to figure out a pattern. His latest potion required a minimum curing time of seventy-two hours, anyway. He was only glad that his eye was still practiced enough that he wouldn't have to find some way to take her measurements manually. There _was_ a limit to how much he was willing to compromise himself.

He ignored her calls for lunch and tea, and by dusk, he had the dress cut out and began pinning the blouse together. It was likely too involved for a maid's dress - sackcloth would have done just fine - but should anyone happen to see her upon dropping in, he wouldn't let it be said that the Dark One's help went ratty and unkempt.

Belle called him down for dinner just as he was feeling a pinch between his eyes from lack of light. After the third, most irritated call of "Rumpelstiltskin! Dinner!" pinched at him further, he took himself and his work downstairs in a billow of dark smoke. It was just as well that she didn't notice his sewing paraphernalia appearing by the fireplace.

It wasn't until she later brought a book down from the library to read by firelight that she stumbled upon him there, sitting in his armchair, gathering a sleeve to set in.

She stood over him, curious at his furtiveness these last couple of days. "What are you doing?" she asked him again.

And he replied again, "None of your business," not missing a stitch. _This time_ , he heard her footsteps approaching. He looked up at her, taking in her book and the set of her mouth. She'd been expecting to have the chair to herself, apparently. "You have a place to read in the library you're meant to be cleaning, do you not?"

"It's cold there in the evenings," she told him.

"Too hot, too cold. My maid is never happy," he said, looking back his work.

"I didn't know you could sew," Belle observed as if he hadn't been surly with her, kneeling down to place herself to the side, between him and the fire.

"There are a great many things you don't know about me," he murmured, glancing up at her and immediately pricking his fingertip for his lack of attention. He growled in irritation and healed it. Bloody pinpricks, worse than getting run through with a sword. "Things that would drive you stark raving mad," he told her, following it with a malicious titter.

She only tilted her head at him, an expression of doubt on her face. "What are you sewing, then?"

"None of-"

"None of my business, I know." She made herself comfortable on the carpet before the fire and opened the book on her lap, obviously intending to keep him company. Or perhaps simply not giving up her claim on the spot. Both options unsettled him.

Three similar evenings, it took. Belle continued to attempt conversation until he relented, making small talk with her about anything save himself. The village, her town, the people within each. He told her of the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker, and of their families, who had lived in the village for generations. She was fascinated with the way he knew everyone's name without hesitation, and spent more time watching his needle than reading her book.

By the end of the third night, he was very nearly done with the little blue dress. He'd had to keep himself from making the simple garment too fancy or embellished. The pretty cut of it was bad enough. His maid was asleep, leaning against the fireplace leg with her book splayed open over her stomach, when he finished the last stitches in the hem. He stitched back on it a bit, sewed in a knot, then snapped the thread with his teeth.

He spent a good ten minutes waffling between waking her to give her the dress and leaving it on the chaise in the library for her to find. He wound up tossing the dress into her lap, frightening her awake with a squeak, and he was halfway across the room when she'd gotten a good enough look to see what it was.

"You sewed this for _me?_ " she asked, bewildered.

"Well, I wasn't making it for myself, was I?" He spun to face her. He _had_ hoped to get away before she asked. In hindsight, throwing the dress at her perhaps hadn't been the way to achieve that. "It isn't my color."

She stood, holding the bodice and skirt against her. "It looks like it should fit," she said, as if talking to herself, and looked curiously at him again.

He twisted his mouth. "I trust you can cut down your own petticoats?"

His maid nodded and gave him such a broad smile that it made his stomach ache.

His unoccupied hand began to rub thumb against forefinger unbeknownst to him. "I expect you'll be wearing it in the morning," he told her, having to concentrate to bring gruffness to his tone. "You'd probably be just as well to burn that rag you're wearing."

She was on her way toward him, then, and he should have had the presence of mind to take himself right up to the tower, but she had her arms flung around his neck again before he knew it.

"Thank you," she said into the side of his collar.

He brought his hand up to pat tentatively at her back. "All right," he grumbled, his face feeling hot. "That's enough of that."

She let go, looking down at the dress and back up at him with the oddest expression. "Good night, Rumpelstiltskin."

Through his bluster, he never noticed the look of shock on his own face. He waited until she disappeared in the direction of the library before mumbling, "Good night, Belle," in her wake.


End file.
